2 December 2004: research officer AI @ UWS GB; Can we conquer the final frontier - our brain? Man looked in the heavens above and oceans below searching for God. He has always been with us in our brains. God is another emotion like happy, sad, angry, etc. On recurrent use the temporal lobe dominates over all other lobes and so makes a person deeply religious. It should be very difficult to wean such a person away from religion, theoretically atleast. Similarly an atheist should have a poorly developed TL. I am trying to understand how my own Brain works and so far I am bamboozled! But I will keep trying and hopefully in my lifetime crack this tough question. Met a guy from Finland who wants to study neurology to use in his study of international political relations. Study one brain to understand how so many brains work (or dont work) together, maybe he has a point...
4 September 2004: Epilepsy; is it just the way nervous tissue reacts to death and degeneration? When the brain is deprived of glucose/oxygen it makes the animal go into tonic then clonic siezures. Is epilepsy a prinzmetal angina of the brain?
Memory; Reinforced neural circuitry which can involve vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. When a path is used more than once the neurons and glia adjust themselves and next time when the impulse arrives it flows easily through the learnt path. So repetition is a good way of imrpoving memory and it can be reinforced by other pathways. In fact one sense can revive another circuit and so when we smell a favourite food we get memories of past events. Memory and dreams are similar. Dreams are usually in monochrome and almost always involve vision. Hearing, occasionally and smell, taste, touch almost never. Though the brain is in a standby mode during sleep, it is receptive to input. When a subject is dreaming if input goes in through touch/smell the info is incorporated; vision, hearing and taste are not possible without waking the subject. Addiction and the amygdala (pleasure point) Addiction is a reinforced neural pathway involving the amygdala. All addictive behaviour such as alcoholism, drug use, gambling, serial killer, rapist, liar, arsonist can be explained by this theory. Frontal siganls predominate on initial exposure and hesitancy, refusal may occur. Once the frontal inhibition is crossed a neural path is set and that involves the amygdala. Next time the behaviour is reinforced by the amygdala and repetition assigns it to memory. The frontal signal is therefore suppressed and pure amygdala signals take over. That explains the loss of personality in addiction and tendency to ignore responsibilities and complete focus on achieving the stimulation. All other frontal activities are ignored and even basic survival impulse is ignored due to the strong amygdala response. It is a vicious cycle and the more it is done the more it reinforces itself. Now the treatment can target enhancing frontal and other signals or suppressing the amygdala using targetted magnetic suppression/ablation. What other purpose does the amygdala serve? Can it be completely removed in addicts? The result will be a person with no pleasure! Sleep/dreams
31 August 2004: Just created this web log to give vent to some of my frustration at times of stress and hopefully harvest some ideas/energy from that. The MMI field is new and old. Since the time we threw our first stone weapon to hunt for food 10k years ago we have started interacting. The difference in 2004 is machines are capable of intelligence. As compared to human brain (millions of years old) computers are still in the single cell stage. As the human brain has evolved it has nicely adapted itself to the changing environs. Brain senses five main inputs - light(vision), sound(hearing), chemical molecules in gas form (smell), taste (chemical molecules in liquid form) and touch (basic sensor input). Light is perceived as presence/absence, tone, brighness and colour (frequency). Data-information-knowledge that is how processing occurs. If the data is exploding in size will the brain evolve to process this or just selectively filter the info and use it? We sense the world by vision (light), hearing (sound), smell (chemicals as gas), taste (chemicals as liquid) and touch (attributes of objects such as temperature, dimensions in 3D, size, etc.). Predominantly vision is used to input data. Modern machines are using sight, hearing and some smell to present data. Is the sensory end organs' data processing necessary for it to travel to the brain? Cochlear implants prove that it is not so. Can we improve the efficiency of data acquisition? Does the brain work better when cooled (as PCs do)? How does the brain learn? What is memory? Can we write and read from memory directly into the brain? Is magnetism a way to reach the brain non invasively and interact with it? Is it possible to directly read/write to the human brain? Vision is the primary means of inputting data now. In ancient times hearing was the main means of data acquisition (in India). What is memory? What is the real world like when not interpretted through a human brain? Is the perception affecting our basic laws of science? Einsteins theory of relativity says time is relative to the observer. Is sense also relative to the observer?
1 comment:
just memory strong enough to make it a real experience, shows how much you loved your father. surprised you recall it...dreams are usually lost once awake.try recalling, no memory
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